“Well, my dear friend Roland,” flashed through Frederick’s mind, “you’re a fellow that’s a match for the ocean.”  With that he set foot on the gangway-ladder.  He completely forgot his previous identity and the reason of his being here.

When, to the wild tune of the brass band, he stepped from the upper rung upon the roomy deck, and stood in the garish sheen of an arc-light, he found himself between two rows of men, the officers and some of the ship’s crew.  It was the group of uniformed men he had noticed from below.  He was astonished and delighted to behold so many confidence-inspiring masculine figures.  It was an assemblage of magnificent specimens of manhood, all, from the first mate down to the stewards, tall, picked men, with bold, simple, intelligent, honest features.  Moved by a sense at once of pride and of complete trust and security, Frederick said to himself that after all there was still a German nation left; and the singular thought flashed through his mind that God would never decide to take such a selection of noble, faithful men and drown them in the sea like blind puppies.

A steward picked up his luggage and led the way to a cabin with two berths, which he was to have to himself.  Soon after, he was sitting at one end of a horseshoe-shaped table in the dining-room.  The service was excellent, and the few passengers from the tender ate and drank; but it was not very lively.  The main dinner was over, and the little company from the tender in the great, low-ceiled, empty saloon, were each too tired and too engrossed in self to talk.

During the meal Frederick was not aware whether the mammoth body was moving or standing still.  The faint, scarcely perceptible quiver seemed too slight to be a sign of the motion of so huge a mass.  Frederick had made his first sea voyage when a lad of eighteen as the only passenger on a merchantman going from Hamburg to Naples.  The thirteen years since had considerably weakened the impressions of that trip.  Moreover, the luxury of this ocean liner into which he had strayed was something so new to him, that all he could do at first was scrutinize everything in astonishment.

When he had drunk his customary few glasses of wine, a sense of peace and comfort stole over him.  After their long irritation and tension his nerves succumbed to a pleasant tiredness, which pressed upon him so healthily and imperatively that he felt almost sure of a refreshing night’s sleep.  He even made the firm resolution—­in his condition scarcely necessary—­that for this night bygones should be bygones, the future the future, and the present, without regard for past or future, should belong unqualifiedly to rest and sleep.

When he went to bed, he actually did sleep for ten hours, heavily, without stirring.  At breakfast in the dining-room, he asked for the passenger list, and with a wild leap of his heart read the names for which he had been looking, Eugen Hahlstroem and Miss Ingigerd Hahlstroem.